Grant brings more music to South Bay schools

Money provided for school instruments

Last Wednesday, VH1 Save The Music Foundation presented J. Calvin Lauderbach Elementary School in Chula Vista with $30,000 worth of new musical instruments. The event was also a forum for the Chula Vista Elementary School District, San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory and San Diego County Office of Education Visual and Performing Arts to announce their partnership that has roots back to 2010 with the foundation to ensure all school children experience the positive effects of music education.

For every full-time music teacher the Chula Vista district hires for a school, the VH1 Save The Music Foundation will give $30,000 to that school to purchase musical instruments. The foundation also announced Wednesday it would be awarding four grants to CVESD for the 2014-15 school year.

The school district had cut music instruction from nearly all of its 45 schools more than 15 years ago and had no full-time music teachers until this year. The district’s multiyear plan with VH1 outlines a formula for bringing music back into every school within the next 15 years.

It is one of only two school districts in the nation to be added in 2013-14 to the list of districts receiving VH1 Save The Music Foundation grants.

VH1’s involvement came out of the Community Opus Project, a CVESD initiative in collaboration with the San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory. Initially, the Community Opus Project began at Otay and Lauderbach elementary schools, and grew to six campuses in the district.

“This is not about the youth symphony alone, this is about the Chula Vista community,” said Dalouge Smith, president and chief executive officer of the San Diego Youth Symphony. “We have really seen the impact we are having on many, many layers of the community.”

Since 1997, the VH1 Save The Music Foundation has donated $51 million worth of new musical instruments to 1,900 public schools in 192 school districts.